


the coming of age has come and gone

by CloudySkyWars



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Death, Gen, Mentions of Sexual Assault, Mentions of Slavery, Sad, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29562198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudySkyWars/pseuds/CloudySkyWars
Summary: Ahsoka Tano grows up in a war.ORAhsoka Tano's coming of age_______________________________________________________Ahsoka Tano is 13 years old when the war starts. She is old for an initiate, and the other Padawans look at her with disdain. The rule was that when you turned 13, you were sent to the AgriCorps. No one knows why an exception was made for her. She is angry and disappointed in herself. She will be chosen as a Padawan, she will, she’ll just have to work harder for it.Ahsoka is 13 when her old friends start leaving the Temple, going off with their Masters and fighting in a war that they didn’t start. She is 13 when she receives news of her best friend dying, slain by a droid on some nameless battlefield. He was not buried; there was no one left alive to do it. She is 13 when she first wonders if she wants to be a Padawan anymore.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	the coming of age has come and gone

Ahsoka Tano is 13 years old when the war starts. She is old for an initiate, and the other Padawans look at her with disdain. The rule was that when you turned 13, you were sent to the AgriCorps. No one knows why an exception was made for her. She is angry and disappointed in herself. She  _ will  _ be chosen as a Padawan, she will, she’ll just have to work harder for it. 

Ahsoka is 13 when her old friends start leaving the Temple, going off with their Masters and fighting in a war that they didn’t start. She is 13 when she receives news of her best friend dying, slain by a droid on some nameless battlefield. He was not buried; there was no one left alive to do it. She is 13 when she first wonders if she wants to be a Padawan anymore.

Ahsoka Tano is 13 when the other Padawans don’t look down on her anymore; now, they wish they hadn’t been chosen yet either. They were not scared of dying, because Jedi didn’t give into fear. But as they lay awake in bed, they wished they were back at the Temple and not on their way to another battle.

* * *

Ahsoka Tano is 14 years old when she is assigned to be Master Skywalker’s Padawan.  _ Assigned, not chosen.  _ She arrives on Christophsis, and she finds her Master doesn’t want her. Didn’t even know she was coming. She forces her tears back with humor, and earns her nickname, Snips. Her first mission as a Padawan is a success, and she hopes they are all like this one.

Ahsoka is 14 when she loses her first squadron. She is guilty, she is ashamed, but mostly she is scared. Her master didn’t want her in the first place- would he send her back because of her mistake? Would her men still allow her to lead them? To her surprise, her Master lets her stay. He encourages her, still trusts her, for which she is glad. She vows to never make that mistake again. 

Ahsoka is 14 when she nearly dies for the first time. Beneath the rubble of the droid factory with Barriss, she accepts the fact that she will die. The realization brings with it a sense of peace. She could die down here, suffocated to death. But it would be okay- her Master and her men would live, and that’s all that matters. Her Master digs her out of the rubble, and she’s never been happier to see his face and the sun. The next day she nearly dies again, this time by her own friend’s hand. Once again, she is at peace. As she recovers in the medbay, she wonders:  _ how many more times will I cheat death during this war? When will it catch up? _

* * *

Ahsoka Tano is 15 when she dies. She doesn’t remember dying, which concerns her more than the event itself. Anakin won’t tell her what happened, and Obi-Wan won’t go against Anakin’s wishes. All she remembers is being captured by the Son, and waking up in Anakin’s arms. Everything in between was just- darkness. She doesn’t tell Anakin, but sometimes when she’s alone at night, she feels the darkness creeping back in. It doesn’t scare her- at least she tells herself it doesn’t. 

Ahsoka is 15 when she is kidnapped and hunted for sport. It scares her more than dying did. Here, she was responsible for more lives than just her own. Here, she doesn’t have Anakin or her men watching her back. And it scares her. She finally makes it off that moon, though she never truly leaves. She doesn’t know it yet, but she will be hunted most of her life. And every time she runs, she thinks of Wasskah. 

Ahsoka is 15 when her men lose faith in her. She wasn’t present for Umbara, and she regrets that every time she looks in her men’s eyes. Where once there was trust and friendship, there was now fear and mistrust. Slowly, ever so slowly, they stop flinching when she ignites her lightsaber. They start speaking to her as a friend again, referring to her as “Commander” out of respect rather than fear. But things are never the same as they were  _ before.  _

* * *

Ahsoka Tano turns 16 on Zyggeria, in a cage over the city. She doesn’t even realize when it happens; it is not until after, when she is back on the warship she now calls home, that she realizes that the day passed. She thinks back on her time on that planet, on the dress she had to wear, the hands that touched her. It was all for her people,  _ for the Republic,  _ but she resented it just a bit. She should have spent her birthday with her friends, with Anakin, with her men, but instead she spent it  ~~ pretending  ~~ to be a slave.  _ Happy birthday to me,  _ she thought. 

Ahsoka is 16 when she holds Obi-Wan’s dead body in her arms. From the beginning, she knew it was a possibility. Knew that she might have to watch her Master or Grandmaster die in front of her. But knowing something  _ could  _ happen and it  _ actually  _ happening are very different things. As a Jedi, she was trained to let go of her attachments, something that her Master was never very good at. But sitting alone in her room, she let go of Obi-Wan. Let go of the memories they had, of the  ~~ love  ~~ they shared between them. And when he came back, alive and mostly well, she was happy, she truly was. But she found it was harder to let him back in than it was to let go of him in the first place. 

Ahsoka is 16 when she is chased and shot at by her men, by the people she thought were her family. It is familiar, running away. It takes her back to Wasskah, the moon that still haunted her at night. She is 16 when she is cast out of the Order, 16 when she is tried and nearly convicted of murder.  _ 16  _ when she is nearly executed. And she is 16 when she leaves the only life she had ever known. She leaves Anakin standing behind her, her Padawan braid still in his hand. She can feel the tears in her eyes as she descends the Temple steps. Right now, she doesn’t regret leaving the Jedi- she just regrets leaving him.

* * *

Ahsoka Tano is 17 when she sees her Master again. He is still taller than her, but she doesn’t have to tilt her head up as much to look at him as she used to. She can tell it hurts him when she shuts down his attempts at conversation, but they have more important matters to attend to. That’s what she tells herself, anyway. When he takes her to the hangar and she sees her men,  _ her men,  _ with their helmets painted with her markings, her breath catches. As much as she had lied to herself over the past year, saying that she didn’t miss them, she  _ had.  _ And she was finally  _ home.  _ She knew she couldn’t bring herself to leave again when this was all over. This was where she belonged.

Ahsoka is 17 when she defeats Darth Maul. It was without a doubt the hardest fight of her life, and she knew she had gotten immensely lucky. It had been a year since she had fought with her lightsabers, but it was as though she had never left them. They were blue now, courtesy of Anakin, but they felt just as they had before. Her mind drifts to what Maul had said about Anakin.  _ But he was wrong,  _ she told herself. She knew him better than that. 

Ahsoka is 17 when her family dies. She feels the death of thousands of Jedi all at once, and it nearly brings her to her knees. Even though she left them, they were still her family, and she wanted to mourn them. But she didn’t get the chance. Because when she is 17, Rex, one of her most loyal friends, fires at her. She hides in the vents, once again running from the people she once trusted. She finds Rex’s report about Fives, she finds him and gets his chip out. She lets Maul go, and hates herself for it when the ship starts to go down. Despite her efforts and her promise not to kill her men, not to kill Rex’s brothers, they all die anyway, and she knows it’s her fault. 

Ahsoka is 17 when she lets go of the lightsaber that was her life. It falls to the ground on Jesse’s grave, and some morbid part of her thinks it’s fitting. Everyone that made her who she was died on that day, and leaving this piece of her life to be buried with them seemed only fair. She and Rex flew away from that moon, but a piece of Ahsoka remained there forever. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thank you for reading. If you liked it, please consider leaving a comment, they really make my day! I love fics written like this, and wanted to try my hand at it. Let me know what you thought of it!  
> Come scream with me about Star Wars on tumblr at [CloudySkyWars](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/cloudyskywars)


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